Harvey Dent
History (Submitted by Oracle) Harvey Dent: 1972 - 1985 Harvey is the son of Christopher and Laura Dent. Though originally born into the lower-class of Gotham, Harvey would be granted a more luxurious lifestyle when his mother won an election to the Gotham City Council, but this came with its own problems. Harvey's father, a perpetual failure who had trouble keeping a steady job, began to resent his wife's success. Whenever she was able to accomplish something significant for the family's welfare, Christopher Dent usually took his wife out to celebrate and the next day, while Laura was at work, a hungover Christopher would wake Harvey up and force the boy to flip a coin. If the coin landed on heads, Harvey was free to go to school. If the coin landed tails, Christopher would strike Harvey before the boy's mind could even register the result of the coin toss. The severity of the beating that followed was based on Laura's accomplishment, how much Christopher had to drink the night before, and how much Harvey resisted. As Harvey got older, he learned to fight back; but he never won the fight until he was twelve and had stashed a baseball bat under the sofa to defend himself. After two blows from the bat, Christopher Dent was struck down. Panicking as he thought he had killed his father, Harvey fled from his home. My dad was the cop who found Harvey at the bus depot and took him home to his mother where Harvey learned that not only was his father not dead but had convinced both the police and Harvey's mother that Harvey was a deeply disturbed boy that had assaulted him without provocation. Harvey was sent away to spend his summer at a youth camp for troubled and traumatized young Gothamites. It was here that he would meet Bruce Wayne. Bruce had been sent to the camp after his parents' killer had been caught earlier that year and the trial had caused all sorts of mixed emotions in Bruce to rise to the surface, throwing him into a dark episode where he had tried to take his own life. Bruce and Harvey got along pretty good early into the summer. Harvey taught Bruce a few fighting moves he had picked up and Bruce came up with the idea of Harvey carrying a two-headed coin to escape future beatings. The two teenage boys even made a pact to kill the source of each other's grief: with Harvey agreeing to kill Joseph Chilton and Bruce agreeing to kill Christopher Dent. When Harvey returned home, he employed Bruce's trick coin idea to escape beatings. This worked like a charm until one day when Harvey left the coin in his pocket and his father found it while doing laundry. Chris Dent was so enraged that he began to beat Harvey in front of his mother. When Laura tried to intervene, Chris assaulted her as well and in this melee, Chris Dent's .22 pistol went off. The official police record showed that Laura had fired the two shots that crippled Chris but recent evidence suggests it may have been Harvey. Harvey Dent: 1985 - 2001 Harvey would again meet Bruce the following year when Harvey began attending Brentwood Academy (after his mother had spun the shooting of her husband into an empowering spin for her political campaign). When the boys caught up, Bruce was upset with Harvey for having forgiven his now handicapped father. The two's friendship would disintegrate quickly when Harvey told Bruce that he had a change of heart in their murder pact. But Harvey was a charismatic young man and he would make plenty more friends to replace the loss of one rich orphan. Still, Harvey hung on to the coin and would constantly employ that trick to great effect to help manipulate fate in his favor. Bruce would graduate early and Harvey went on to become the student body president for both of his last two years at Brentwood which went a long way in securing a scholarship. Destined for politics, Harvey went into law school after getting his undergraduate degree. After passing the Bar exam, Harvey's first work was as a defense attorney but after his first client turned out to be a child abuser, Harvey switched sides and became a prosecutor for the District Attorney's office. When Bruce Wayne returned to Gotham, Harvey was surprised to find an invitation for him to attend the welcoming gala for Bruce. At the party, before the armed hostilities arranged by Nygma would erupt, Bruce greeted Harvey and introduced him to Wayne's personal assistant Gilda Gold. Harvey was smitten by Miss Gold at once and when gunfire later erupted, Harvey and Gilda ducked into a coat closet together for safety. After evacuating, Bruce invited Harvey and Gilda to join him and Silver St. Cloud out for Chinese and it was here that Bruce put Harvey up for running for the office of Gotham District Attorney. Resistant at first, Harvey ultimately came around when Bruce put Gilda in charge of the Wayne Foundation political initiative and tasked her with persuading Harvey to run for office. After Harvey agreed to run, Gilda and he began an official romance while planning his election strategy. They were married just after Harvey won the election. Of course, Bruce had an ulterior motive to getting Harvey to run for DA. Bruce knew that Harvey was a good man, but deep-down was also someone who understood the gray areas of justice. He knew that he could turn Harvey into an ally for Batman and should Harvey ever prove resistant against Batman, Bruce knew Harvey's dark secret... but Bruce hoped that would remain the ace up his sleeve. Together, they proved a powerful team: Gotham's white knight and its mysterious dark knight, and proved this power by putting both Falcone and Maroni in prison. But it was during the sentencing hearing for Maroni that Harvey's life would take on a hideous turn. Two-Face: 2001 - Present During the sentencing hearing for Salvatore Maroni, the convicted mob boss pulled a small vial of acid from his person, a vial given to him by the Joker the night before, and splashed the caustic substance on the left hand and the side of Harvey's face, disfiguring Gotham's beloved 'White Knight'. Even Harvey's lucky coin had also been scarred by the acid burn as it had been in Harvey's hand during the fateful encounter. Harvey sunk into a deep depression after he left the hospital. He began to drink and found himself haunted by nightmares of his father coming to beat him. Gilda and Bruce reached out to him to get help, but they didn't realize how fast the White Knight was quickly succumbing to 'Big Bad Harv', a personality that echoed Harvey's abusive father. Still, Harvey got medication and donned a half-mask face prosthetic to go out in public... but he was anything but okay. After a judge tossed out one of Harvey's cases due to Harvey having an episode of missing time and missing a court date, Harvey began to spiral into madness. When the police later found that a witness for the defense, a psychiatrist in the mob's pocket, had been killed during the same time that Harvey was unable to account for his whereabouts, Dent flipped out. He drew a .22 caliber pistol and shot the two detectives who had come to question him dead... and so began the criminal career of Two-Face. Harvey's first crime spree ended abruptly when Bruce Wayne found him standing over the side of his crippled father's nursing home bed. Harvey had a gun to his father's head and was shouting at his fear-stricken father to flip the coin. Bruce got close enough to grab the coin from Christopher Dent's hand, flip it, and cover it in his hand. Harvey screamed at Bruce to show him the result, but Bruce put his foot over the coin before Harvey could see the result. Infuriated, Harvey turned his aggression on Bruce. Bruce took the beating until Harvey wore himself out, but kept the coin covered at all costs. Only when Harvey was panting and coughing did Bruce reveal the coin result: heads. Shocked to have given out a beating when the coin showed no beating was needed, Harvey turned himself in to the police. Sent to Arkham, Harvey has made good progress many times, but he always seems to revert for one reason or another. It seems for now Harvey Dent and Two-Face are two sides of the same coin.Deluxe Oracle Files: Harvey Dent Threat Assessment Missing Data Arkham Files Medical Profile * Patient is in excellent physical health, despite severe acid burn scars on the left side of his head, face, neck, as well as his left shoulder and upper portion of his left arm. Psychological Profile * Patient is a bizarre schizotypal whose ideation is heavily influenced by the notion of duality and fate, so much so that the patient often decides most major decisions on the flip of his half-scarred silver dollar. * Patient is obsessed with the number "2". Behavior Profile * Patient agrees to attend approximately half of his scheduled therapy sessions and when he does the sessions are either productive or pointless venues to rant about chance and dualism. * Patient is completely untreatable and often catatonic whenever deprived of his coin, so he has been allowed to keep the silver dollar in order to stabilize his behavior (half of the time). * Patient continues to damage the left side of his jumpsuits, as such our policy is to issue him only jumpsuits he has previously damaged. * Patient has caused damage to one side of his cell. Attempts to repair the damage of transfer him to other calls has only caused further damage. * Threat Assignment: High * Treatment Ranking: 3-Ambivalent * Intake Interviewer: Dr. Roy Westerman * Assigned Patient Coordinator: Dr. Chase MeridianArkham Files: Two-Face Trivia and Notes Trivia * His criminal organization, the Second Street Gang, are part of the Masterminds organization and oversee the Old Gotham district, including the Narrows. * Two-Face acts as the expert on the by-laws of the Masterminds at their meetings. * When he's in Arkham he's housed in the Intensive Care Area. * When he's in Arkham he becomes incredible hostile if he doesn't get his usual cell on the second floor of Block Two. * When he's in Arkham he has requested books from the library. There's a restricted list which includes media with number two or duality. Notes * Two-Face's Patient number (#87403) is a nod to the comic book where Frank Miller reinvented Two-Face as a tragic character (more similar to Earth-27's version): Batman: Year One #4, in 1987. * In the comics he had a brother named Murray. A nod to him can be found in his name. * His aliases are nods to other comics and characters. ** Multi-Face was a villain. ** Janus is a roman god with two faces. ** Apollo is his alias in Detective Comics #66. ** Holiday is a nod to Batman: The Long Halloween. ** Big Bad Harv is a nod to Batman: The Animated Series. ** Gotham's White Knight is a nod to the film The Dark Knight. * The pact between Bruce and Harvey is a nod to All-Star Batman #3 and #4. * His lieutenants Sugar and Spice are a nod to the film Batman Forever. Links and References * Appearances of Harvey Dent * Character Gallery: Harvey Dent Category:Characters Category:Villains Category:Arkham Inmates Category:Masterminds Category:Second Street Gang Members Category:Brown Hair Category:White Hair Category:Brown Eyes Category:Red Eyes Category:Criminals Category:Lawyers Category:Crimelords Category:Male Characters Category:Gothamite Category:27th Reality Category:Mental Illness Category:Known to Authorities Identity Category:Schizotypal Category:Scarred